My pop door is a guillotine style sliding door. It slides up to let the hens out, and down to lock the girls in the coop for the night. I've kind of built myself into a corner because I can't reach the door very well, and my plan for locking the door hasn't really worked out.
Here's a photo of my coop and the pop door so you can see my setup. There are doorways in the coop and in the run. They must line up for the girls to jump out into the run. I move both the coop and run every day.
At first, I was just using a regular hasp latch kind of like this on the bottom of the coop's pop door:
I had two problems: 1) Bedding kept getting stuck in the doorway, and made it hard for the latch to close and 2) my portable run was in the way, so I had to move everything just to lock and unlock the door.
Now I'm using U-shaped pipe holders to secure the door. I insert a dowl-like stick through the pipe holders in the doorframe and the door. That holds the door down.
What I need, is a way to secure my dowl-like stick so that a predator doesn't just pop the stick out, and open the pop door. I think what I need is a stall latch kind of contraption like this one. It would slide through all my U-shaped pipe holders, and then I could lock it in place.
The problem is that I can't find stall latches that are longer than 10 inches. I would need between 24 and 30 inches long to fit my door.
I'm looking for any kind of suggestion. The thing that is important to me is that I can secure it from the side of the coop, outside of the run. Of course I also want something that IS secure.
Here's a photo of my coop and the pop door so you can see my setup. There are doorways in the coop and in the run. They must line up for the girls to jump out into the run. I move both the coop and run every day.
At first, I was just using a regular hasp latch kind of like this on the bottom of the coop's pop door:
I had two problems: 1) Bedding kept getting stuck in the doorway, and made it hard for the latch to close and 2) my portable run was in the way, so I had to move everything just to lock and unlock the door.
Now I'm using U-shaped pipe holders to secure the door. I insert a dowl-like stick through the pipe holders in the doorframe and the door. That holds the door down.
What I need, is a way to secure my dowl-like stick so that a predator doesn't just pop the stick out, and open the pop door. I think what I need is a stall latch kind of contraption like this one. It would slide through all my U-shaped pipe holders, and then I could lock it in place.
The problem is that I can't find stall latches that are longer than 10 inches. I would need between 24 and 30 inches long to fit my door.
I'm looking for any kind of suggestion. The thing that is important to me is that I can secure it from the side of the coop, outside of the run. Of course I also want something that IS secure.
